John
Boy's Journal
- Personal journal kept by John Boy
Walton (Richard Thomas) on the drama THE WALTONS/CBS/1972-81.

John Boy was the oldest of seven children living on
Walton's Mountain in the Blue Ridge Mountains of rural Jefferson
County, Virginia. Alone in his room John Boy recorded his
private thoughts and stories of his family, friends and his life
on Walton's Mountain.

With dreams of someday becoming a writer,
John Boy enrolled as an English major in Boatwright University
and while there established his own newspaper The Blue Ridge
Chronicle.

When John Boy's novel was accepted by a publisher, he left
Walton's Mountain and moved to New York. At the outbreak of
World War II, he became a war correspondent in London and later
wrote for the Stars and Stripes in Paris.

In the made-for-TV
movie The Homecoming-A Christmas Story (the 1971 pilot for the
series) John Boy kept the door to his room locked when he wrote
in his journal. His mother (Patricia Neal) wondered what was
going on in there and later discovered John Boy's hidden
journal.

John Boy writing by the fireplace

In later years John Boy remarked "I used to think I'd
be married to my writing, and books would be my children." Soon
after saying that he got engaged to a beautiful editor.

The
series was based on the movie Spencer's Mountain (1963) written
by Earl Hamner Jr. who based the story on his own youthful
Depression days in rural Virginia. Earl Hamner, Jr also narrated
the series as the voice of John Boy.